Google Creates New Parent Company Called Alphabet

Google CEO Larry Page has announced the creation of Alphabet, a new parent company for Google. Page will serve as Alphabet's CEO.

Seth Wenig
/ AP

Originally published on August 11, 2015 7:01 am

On Monday, Google CEO Larry Page announced the formation of a new parent company for Google called Alphabet. Page describes Alphabet as a collection of companies including Google, Life Sciences (which focuses on medicine and health issues), and Calico (a company that claims to tackle aging), among others.

Page says that he will be CEO of Alphabet and that Google co-founder Sergey Brin will be president of the new company. The Wall Street Journal reports that Eric Schmidt will be Alphabet's executive chairman.

Page wrote that the new structure will allow Google "more management scale," by allowing leadership at the company to "run things independently that aren't very related."

All of the companies under Alphabet will also have their own leadership, he wrote:

"Alphabet is about businesses prospering through strong leaders and independence. In general, our model is to have a strong CEO who runs each business, with Sergey and me in service to them as needed. We will rigorously handle capital allocation and work to make sure each business is executing well. We'll also make sure we have a great CEO for each business, and we'll determine their compensation."

Sundar Pichai, currently Google's senior vice president in charge of products, will become the CEO of Google. "I feel very fortunate to have someone as talented as he is to run the slightly slimmed down Google and this frees up time for me to continue to scale our aspirations," Page wrote.

Alphabet will also replace Google Inc. as the publicly traded entity and "all shares of Google will automatically convert into the same number of shares of Alphabet, with all of the same rights," Page wrote, with Google becoming a wholly owned subsidiary of Alphabet.

Page says Alphabet will include Wing, the company's drone delivery effort. But The New York Times reports that Nest, which makes Internet-connected devices for the home; Fiber, a high-speed Internet company; Google Ventures; Google Capital; and Google X, the company's incubator, will all be separated under Alphabet. The Times says search, advertising, Google Maps, YouTube and the company's mobile operating system Android will all remain part of Google.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Google stock was up after the announcement, in after-hours trading.

TechCrunch notes that Google went with the name Alphabet despite the fact that alphabet.com is owned by BMW. The Twitter handle @alphabet is already claimed by a man in Cleveland.